Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Call felt like giving Captain King a good dressing down, for being so careless with an important document, but it was hard to dress down a man who was laughing; and, anyway, Captain King was the one man who might help them succeed in their mission.

"I wish you'd read it before you let it blow in the river," Call said. He spread the letter on a good-sized rock; thinking it might dry if given time.

"I beg your pardon, Captain," Captain King said, attempting to control his amusement. "I don't usually throw letters into the river, particularly not if they're letters from a high potentate like Ed Pease. But I must say this is the best laugh yet. Captain McCrae here has mistook our blue sow for a shark." "Sow ... what sow?" Gus asked, annoyed by the man's jocular tone.

"Why, that sow," Captain King said, with a wave of his hand. "She probably caught a snake--a moccasin, perhaps. There's not much to Lonesome Dove but at least it's mainly clean of snakes. The sow eats them all--she's thorough, when it comes to snakes." "But Captain," Gus said, appalled by his mistake. "Whoever heard of a blue pig? I ain't." Captain King evidently didn't welcome challenges to his point of view--he looked at Augustus sharply.

"That's a French pig, sir," he said.

"She's silvery in the main, though I suppose she does look bluish in certain lights. She comes from the region of the Dordogne, I believe. In France they use pigs to root up truffles, but you'll find very few damn truffles in this part of the world--s mainly she roots up snakes. Madame Wanz brought her over, and a fine boar too. I expect the boar is off girling, like my bull Solomon. When you get a closer look you'll find she's unusually long legged, that sow. She ain't low slung, like these runty little Texas pigs. The long legs are for climbing hills, to seek out the truffles, which don't flourish in low altitudes." Call was listening carefully, impressed by Captain King's quick manner. Gus had had the rangers half spooked, with his talk of sharks, when it was only a pig in the water, downriver.

He didn't know what a truffle was, or why one would need to be rooted up.

"What is a truffle, Captain?" he asked, putting up the rifle he had pulled during the alarm.

"Truffles are edible delicacies, Captain," Richard King said. "I have not had the pleasure of digesting one myself, but Th@er@ese Wanz swears by them, and she's as French as they come." "If she's French, why is she here? This ain't France," Gus said. He was a good deal embarrassed by the matter of the shark that was only a sow; he felt sure he would be ribbed about it endlessly by the other rangers, once they got to town --if there really was a town.

"She should have stayed in France, and her pig too!" he said, in a burst of annoyance.

"They've got no call to be disturbing the local stock!" Captain King had been about to turn his fine bay horse and ride down the river, but he paused and looked at Gus sharply again.

"As to that, sir, you've got no call to be coming down here asking me for cattle when I'm hellish busy selecting worthy wives for my bull Solomon," Captain King said. "When was the last time you had a drink of whiskey, Captain?" "More than a week's passed--I last touched liquor before we struck this dern brush," Gus said.

"No wonder you're surly, then," Captain King said. He pulled a flask out of his saddlebag and offered it to Gus. Gus was startled --he politely wiped the top of the flask on his sleeve before taking a good swig and handing the flask back to Captain King. Lee Hitch and Stove Jones looked on enviously.

"Thank you, Captain," Augustus said.

"A man needs his grog," Captain King said. "I'm goddamn surly myself, when deprived of my grog." Call was annoyed with Gus. Why would he say a woman he had never met should have stayed in France? It was rude behaviour, though Captain King was mainly right about the grog. Gus McCrae was scarcely able to be good company now unless he had had his tipple. He was anxious, though, that the rude behaviour not obscure the fact that they needed Captain King's help if they were to secure the thousand cattle.

"Captain, what about the cattle?" he asked --but Richard King was too quick for him. He had already turned his horse and was loping down the river toward where the blue pig lay.

When the rangers finally rode into Lonesome Dove, the town they had been seeking, thicket by thicket, for several days, the wet blue sow, who was indeed large and long legged, followed them at a trot, dragging a sizable bull snake she had just killed.

"I wouldn't call this a town," Augustus McCrae said, looking around disappointed. There were four adobe buildings, all abandoned--despite what Captain King had just said about the sow's efficiency as a snake killer, the buildings all looked snaky to him.

"No, but it's a nice-sized clearing," Call said. "You could put a town in it, I guess." On the west side of the clearing a large white tent had been erected--near it, construction was under way on what was evidently meant to be a saloon. A floor had been laid, and a long bar built, but the saloon, as yet, had no roof. One table sat on the floor of the barroom-to-be; a small man dressed in a black coat sat at it. There was a tablecloth on the table, as well as a bottle of whiskey and a glass, although the small man did not seem to be drinking.

Outside the tent a small plump woman whose hair hung almost to the backs of her knees was talking volubly to Captain King.

"Do you reckon that bar's open, Gus?" Ikey Ripple asked.

Augustus didn't immediately comment. He was watching the blue sow suspiciously--on the whole he didn't trust pigs--but Stove Jones spoke up.

"Of course it's open, Ike," he said.

"How could you close a saloon that don't have no roof?" Before the matter could be debated further, Captain King came back.

"That tent belonged to Napoleon once," he said. "At least that's Th@er@ese's line. That's Xavier, her husband, sitting there at his table.

I guess the carpenters ran off last night.

It's put Th@er@ese in a temper." "Run off?" Gus said. "Where could a person run off to, from here?" "Anywhere out of earshot of Th@er@ese would do, I expect," Captain King said. "The carpenters in these parts ain't used to the French temperament, or French hair, either. They think Th@er@ese is a witch." Call looked with interest at the tent. He had not made much progress in the book Captain Scull had given him about Napoleon, but he meant to get back to it once his reading improved.

He would have liked to have a look inside the tent, but didn't suppose that would be possible, not with a talky Frenchwoman in it.

"It's a nuisance," Captain King admitted. "Now I'll have to go try to corral the carpenters--I expect it could take half a day." Just then a flock of white-winged doves flew over the clearing, a hundred or more at least.

Mourning doves were abundant too--the one thing that wouldn't need to be lonesome in such a remote place were the doves, Augustus concluded.

"Even if there was a town here I don't see why it would be called Lonesome Dove," he said.

"There's dove everywhere you look." Captain King chuckled. "I can tell you the origin of that misnomer," he said. "There used to be a travelling preacher who wandered through this border country. I knew the man well. His name was Windthorst--Herman Windthorst. He stopped in this clearing and preached a sermon to a bunch of vaqueros once, but while he was preaching a dove lit on a limb above him. I guess Herman took it as a holy omen, because he decided to stop wandering and start up a town." Captain King gestured toward the four fallen-in adobe huts.

"Herman was holier than he was smart," he said. "He lived here a year or two, preaching to whatever vaqueros would stop and listen." "Where is he now?" Gus asked.